91 replies to this topic

[Znail]

First, lets agree that there wont be any large differences in ELO between teams (that is after all part of the match makers job) and thus we wont get 0 or 50 changes after each mach, but 25 or very close to 25 at the very least.

Now to the main problem with this system. 25 points for each match means that 10 more losses then wins gets you -250 points and that is a massive change in ELO. Only around 52 losses more then wins are needed to go from noob rating (1300) to a zero one. Now if this had been a 1 vs 1 one game, like Chess, where ELO originates from, so would this be no problem. But MWO is a team game so getting 10 bad matches where you lost due to a crappy team is something that happens every day. The thing is that a MWO player doesn't have 100% control over if his team will win or lose, unlike in a 1 vs 1 game.

Now, luck will eventually average out so your bad teams will even out with your good teams and thus your own contribution will tell on your winning record. But it takes lots of games to average it out and that is what should be reflected in an ELO system for MWO. The gain/loss amount for ELO should be divided by at least a factore of 8 to compensate for each Mechwarrior only being 1/8th of his team.

Now that means it will take hundreds of games to reach the top of the ranking, but on the other hand so would I find it hard to see how someone aiming at the top of the ranking not having played more then that already.

A totally different problem is that ELO is ment to keep track of good players, not bad ones. 1300 is a noob, but what is a 500 player? It would obviously take a lot of games to get that low (asuming my post is listened to by the devs), so any player that low would by deffinition not be a noob. This is solved in Chess by players getting below 1300 getting reset to 1300 again and thus keeping the noob level to be around 1300. This should preferably be done here as well as it will take care of one form of griefing: Intentionally getting a really low ELO and then start winning again to screw up others rating.

[Joseph Mallan]

Where did you get those numbers.

[Karl Marlow]

I'm confused.

1. If you are making 1300 the baseline then what functional difference does it have to making 0 the baseline. Either way it is the number you can't go below.

2. If you are continuing to lose against opponents in the 700s and 600s. Why are you even wanting to be matches against players in the 1300s?

[Znail]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 January 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

Where did you get those numbers.

From here:
http://mwomercs.com/...79-matchmaking/

The math of the post is a bit complicated for most though, so I can sum it up with that a new player start with 1300 in ELO and then you gain/lose 0-50 points for a win/loss. It's based on the difference between the players (or teams here in MWO), but as the match maker will try and match even teams against eachother so will it most likely end up being around +25 for a win.

[FrDrake]

ThomasMarik, on 31 January 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

I'm confused.

1. If you are making 1300 the baseline then what functional difference does it have to making 0 the baseline. Either way it is the number you can't go below.

2. If you are continuing to lose against opponents in the 700s and 600s. Why are you even wanting to be matches against players in the 1300s?

It's something lots of people complain about in LoL, they claim that their ELO is misrepresented and that due to a bad luck streak they got stuck with incompetent players and that they can't solo carry against even a bad team all by themselves because of all the tools they get grouped with.

Now the argument falls apart because anyone who really doesn't deserve to be in an ELO will be able to climb out of it, the crux of the matter there is that the sampleset needed to shirk your "undeserved" ELO can get to be staggering (like 100s of games).

*Edit* removed double quote

Edited by FrDrake, 31 January 2013 - 02:28 PM.

[Joseph Mallan]

Znail, on 31 January 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

From here:
http://mwomercs.com/...79-matchmaking/

The math of the post is a bit complicated for most though, so I can sum it up with that a new player start with 1300 in ELO and then you gain/lose 0-50 points for a win/loss. It's based on the difference between the players (or teams here in MWO), but as the match maker will try and match even teams against eachother so will it most likely end up being around +25 for a win.

Thanks.

[Smegmw]

ELO will lose you revenue from new players simply for the fact that there will be existing players that make second, third and fourth accounts for the express purpose of losing and then with the proceeds of their significant losses have a helluva time newb stomping. Then the new players will then be demotivated and not continue to play resulting in no possible revenue from that new player.

Edited by Smegmw, 31 January 2013 - 02:38 PM.

[Znail]

ThomasMarik, on 31 January 2013 - 02:21 PM, said:

I'm confused.

1. If you are making 1300 the baseline then what functional difference does it have to making 0 the baseline. Either way it is the number you can't go below.

2. If you are continuing to lose against opponents in the 700s and 600s. Why are you even wanting to be matches against players in the 1300s?

1. Personally I think 0 would be a fine. It's not my idea after all. It's 1300 in Chess just because none wants to bother rworking a working system.

2. Assuming you aren't actually handicapped, playing with 3 FPS or something like that so should you eventually learn to be as good as a player who never played before.

But my point is that the ELO system isn't really ment for juding how bad a player is. It's ment to measure how good one is and thus it works fine in the upwards scale, but not downwards.

[ParasiteX]

I don't think they will base Elo rating from just wins and losses.

They will be releasing a new combat score system before Elo. Which i assume will play a role in affecting you're Elo ranking.

So even if you lose, your elo may still go up, if you performed well in battle. Or at the very least, you wont lose as much of an Elo rating.

We wont know for sure until they release it. Until then. It's all speculation.

[Znail]

Smegmw, on 31 January 2013 - 02:32 PM, said:

ELO will lose you revenue from new players simply for the fact that there will players that make second, third and fourth accounts for the express purpose of losing and then have a helluva time newb stomping. Then the new players will then be demotivated and not continue to play resulting in no possible revenue from that new player.

Now for the record so would I personally prefeer not to have an ELO at all in MWO, but if we get it so would I at least want the changes I suggested to mitigate some of the problems with the system.

Now, this is a problem in other games, but it wont be much of one if players can't go below 1300. That both limits how much impact the Troll acounts can have and also prevents new players from going under 1300 in the first place.

[vettie]

Znail, on 31 January 2013 - 02:24 PM, said:

From here:
http://mwomercs.com/...79-matchmaking/

The math of the post is a bit complicated for most though, so I can sum it up with that a new player start with 1300 in ELO and then you gain/lose 0-50 points for a win/loss. It's based on the difference between the players (or teams here in MWO), but as the match maker will try and match even teams against eachother so will it most likely end up being around +25 for a win.

While I am not agreeing or disagreeing with your thought process, I think that the ELO, when put in place, will not only award +/- for team win or loss, but I think there will be some individual performance accounted for as well.

It is very easy for a solo player to be on a 'bad' team, or lets say a team that gets beaten 7 to 10 times straight, however, the solo player himself might get several kills, assists, lots of damage and so on in each losing effort. I just gotta think there will be ELO rewards accordingly.

[Znail]

ParasiteX, on 31 January 2013 - 02:39 PM, said:

I don't think they will base Elo rating from just wins and losses.

They will be releasing a new combat score system before Elo. Which i assume will play a role in affecting you're Elo ranking.

So even if you lose, your elo may still go up, if you performed well in battle. Or at the very least, you wont lose as much of an Elo rating.

We wont know for sure until they release it. Until then. It's all speculation.

Now, I realise that I should most likely have included the link in my OP, but this isn't pure speculation, it's based on a dev post about how they plan for the future system to work. Now that doesn't mean it will be exactly like that. For all I know so may the devs already have noticed these problems themelves. But I can only speculate on what info they have given us, so that is what I am giving feedback on.

Now, does anyone actually disagree with my first main point? That ELO gain and loss rate should be less then in a 1 vs 1 game to take into account that that a Mechwarrior is only 1/8th of a team?

[Sir Wulfrick]

The reason that an ELO ranking begins at 1300 goes back to it's chess origins. The reason being that only chess players who are generally considered to be of a certain skill level are assigned an ELO at all. The system is designed to take this rought estimate and quantify it based on a formula that takes wins lossess and relative skill in to account.

Starting at 0 would require a serious modification of the ELO system.

http://en.wikipedia....o_rating_system

[SinnerX]

Does anyone else think "future problem" topics are worse than "I'm quitting" topics?

Edited by SinnerX, 31 January 2013 - 02:57 PM.

[Aidan McRae]

An ELO that is based entirely off W/L is not enough for this game. Make it a component, sure, but the most important thing a MechWarrior accomplishes in a match is a Damage Inflicted v. Damage Sustained ratio, or even simplify it to strict Damage inflicted.

ELO should factor in a number of things: relative strength of chassis, relative strength of weaponry, damage inflicted, damage sustained, wins, losses. And that's probably not all-inclusive.

[Titan Osis]

ELO systems are in multiple games and the only problems with them will be that players will think they are better than they are and keep losing at their low ELO level then come to the forums to complain about it.

When ELO is introduced, you will eventually level out to your skill level and stay there unless you feel like opening your mind to getting better. It happened in LoL and HoN and it will happen with this game.

[Odins Fist]

Znail, on 31 January 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

"Problems With The Future Elo"

.
Hmmm.... So being it's in the future, how is it a problem already..??

[Solis Obscuri]

Joseph Mallan, on 31 January 2013 - 02:18 PM, said:

Where did you get those numbers.

Cornholevania?

[Tikkamasala]

Znail, on 31 January 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

Now to the main problem with this system. 25 points for each match means that 10 more losses then wins gets you -250 points and that is a massive change in ELO. Only around 52 losses more then wins are needed to go from noob rating (1300) to a zero one.

If you are losing repeatedly you will be matched with ever lower rated players, i.e. it should be easier to win with every loss. If your true elo is actually higher i doubt you will manage a 52 loss streak.
Anyway they will monitor the convergence and its speed and tune their elo model accordingly.

Znail, on 31 January 2013 - 02:14 PM, said:

A totally different problem is that ELO is ment to keep track of good players, not bad ones. 1300 is a noob, but what is a 500 player?

A new player gets assigned a starting elo value of 1300. Doesn't mean he's a noob. New and inexperienced players will fall below 1300 while the true 1300-elo-players will stay there (or reach 1300 eventually).

[Joe Mallad]

you as a player will not just earn +50 or -50 points toward your ELO for a win or lose and thats it. There will be other things that will factor into what you make as a player at the end of a game. Kills, assists, capturing, spotting... all these things will add to your individual ELO. Maybe only an extra few points here and there but no one person should for the most part, come out of a match with the same ELO numbers. Take that into account that every time you play a match, you may not be playing with the same team mates all the time and their ELO ratings will be different all the time so as a group total... your group ELO numbers may be different going into each match. In turn pitting you against someone different a lot of the times. (unless of course you private match a lot and want to play specific team more than others.) The private match set up can really help and or hurt a team too. Lets say my 8 man team has a really high ELO rating and we decide to invite a much lower ranked team to a private match... not because we want to stomp a lower ranked team but maybe because the guys in that other lower ranked team are good friends of our and we want to have a friendly battle... regardless of ELO ranking. Well... if they beat us, their ELO ranking should jump up quite a bit and ours should drop quite a bit. If we beat them... ours may go up a few points but theirs should not go down all that much either.

Edited by Yoseful Mallad, 31 January 2013 - 03:20 PM.